Muscle flexing in the Gulf waters

The humiliation of American Marines at the hand of the Iranians, this week, is just another example of what many Sunni Arabs suffer in Iraq and Syria.

The arrogance of power exhibited by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards is not confined to the 10 US marines whose boats unintentionally drifted into Iran’s territorial waters. The same arrogance is practised against Sunni Syrians whose villages are starved to death while besieged by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC) in Madaya, Zabadani and seven other Syrian villages that resist the atrocities of the Alawite minority.

It is the same humiliation Iraqi Sunnis had to undergo when the Iranian General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the IRGC, left Tehran for Iraq to lead a campaign of Shiite militias, volunteering from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, who attacked the Sunni towns of Anbar, Tikrit and Miqdadia.

The burning of nine Sunni mosques, killing all adults and plundering all valuables bore the hallmark of these irregular militias.

Such atrocities against Sunnis have been the recruiting call for Daesh to get more volunteers from North African countries.

The Iranian arrogance of power was explicit in IRGC Navy Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi who blamed the US navy for its unprofessional moves after Iran arrested the 10 US Marines and warned that his forces’ coast-to-sea missiles were awaiting orders to hit the American aircraft carrier deployed in the region.

“The USS Truman aircraft carrier showed unprofessional moves for 40 minutes after the detention of the trespassers, while we were highly prepared with our coast-to-sea missiles, missile-launching speedboats and our numerous capabilities and were ready to strike them in case they made a hostile move,” Fadavi said after Iran released the detained US marines whose two boats went 5.6km into Iran’s territorial waters.

US Secretary of State John Kerry must have offered Tehran some quid pro quo for the immediate release of the marines within 24 hours.

It could be in the form of expediting the sanctions relief of more than $150 billion of frozen assets as the date for the implementation of the nuclear deal is approaching, or in the form of some political cash regarding the Syrian file or the pro-Iranian Houthi defeat in Yemen.

The Iranians violated international law and the Geneva Conventions by airing a film of the Marines kneeling with their hands clasped above their heads.

But such an arrogance of power is a message meant to be projected to an Arab Gulf audience, showing that hegemony in the region is exclusively Iran’s, and the world-leading powers admit to that, either explicitly as Moscow does, or implicitly as Washington shall do.